Did Hitler Die in Berlin? Reasons why people still have doubts.

Did Hitler Die in Berlin?

Ever since the end of World War II, some people have been asking, ‘Did Hitler die in Berlin in the Führerbunker’?  It makes sense that some were desperate that he lived on to lead again, while others were frightened that he might reappear like Napoleon and start another war.  Other groups, particularly the future Israelis, were angry that he might have escaped justice, as did many other Nazi leaders.  Well, Hitler never did officially reappear, the mainstream NAZI movement quickly died away like rotten trees and, back in the 1950s, the real bogeymen weren’t runaway Nazis but the ever more powerful and aggressive Soviets.

Let’s go back to the end days of the war, which was going very badly for the Germans.  With the vengeful Russians steamrolling in from the east and the American and British coalition advancing from the west, the situation was looking desperate.

Hitler retreated to his Bunker in Berlin.  By the 27^th of April, Berlin was cut off, and on the 30^th of April 1945, at 3:30 pm, he and his new wife, Eva Braun, apparently committed suicide.  According to Hitler’s wishes, their bodies were quickly and privately taken outside and cremated with petrol and paper by Deputy Führer Martin Bormann and Hitler’s chief valet, Heinz Linge.  According to eyewitnesses, petrol was added several times.  The remains, which were more than expected, were then said to have been interned in a shallow bomb crater.  Continued shelling of the Chancellery buried the area in rubble.  After much searching, the Russian secret service SMERSH allegedly discovered their bodies on the 2^nd of May, along with those of two dogs (Blondi and Wulf). They then informed the Russian leader Joseph Stalin who had been desperate for news.  So … why do some people still believe that Hitler survived.

Berlin: Die im II. Weltkrieg zerstörte Reichskanzlei, rechts ein gesprengter Unterstand für die Wachmannschaft / Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-M1204-318 / Donath, Otto / CC-BY-SA 3.0

Lies, Confusion and Assumptions

From the moment that Hitler was supposed to have taken cyanide and shot himself there has been significant confusion and outright lies by those involved.  Many of the key Nazi figures involved failed to survive or disappeared and even the Russians were less than accurate in their reporting.  Those that did survive and testify were deeply biased as witnesses and quite capable of providing misleading information.

The truth is that whatever happened at 3:30pm in the Führerbunker happened in private.  Only a few people initially entered the study where Hitler and Eva Braun had allegedly committed suicide. These were Bormann, Linge, Misch, Günsche and Goebbels and within 24 hours Bormann had disappeared and Goebbels was dead by suicide.

The first big lie was the announcement of Hitler’s death by the Reichssender Hamburg radio station. Admiral Donitz, Hitler’s successor, announced that the Fuhrer had died while fighting in Berlin – patently untrue. Various news reports and accounts started being published on the 2^nd May 1945 and claimed so many different versions of what happened that no one knew what to believe.  Times magazine ran several different versions and Louis Lochner, the Berlin correspondent  for Associated Press wrote: “I still cannot escape the feeling that Hitler is some place where nobody expects him to be.”  Times magazine first wrote on the 7^th of May that there was doubt over how he died with reports from Sweden claiming he had suffered a brain haemorrhage.  They later wrote on the 14^th May, “Hitler has died more deaths in history than any other man”.  The London Daily Express had already claimed, based on a tip off from intelligence sources, that Hitler had snuck out of Berlin and was on a submarine heading for Tokyo.  Those that doubt what happened on the 30^th April 1945 point out that historians often appear to have 2020 vision in hindsight but the reality is that the full and official account of what happened in the Führerbunker had to be pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle where half the pieces are missing, the picture on the box was the wrong one and the table used was very old an unreliable.

Fuhrerbunker Trench with Firewood

Here are the main reasons that people still doubt the official version of events:

Moving the Bodies – In Blankets (Linge)

Heinz Linge was Hitler’s valet and, by interesting coincidence, the name ‘Linge’ is French for laundry (weird). Linge immediately had the bodies wrapped in blankets before having them taken outside.  Actually, very few people ever claimed to see the bodies and certainly not while they were being moved.

The Miracle Jawbone – and dental survival

The bodies of Hitler and Braun were taken into the ruins of the garden and, while still wrapped in the blankets, covered with petrol and set on fire.  This is where things stop making sense.  According to some reports, the fire was slow to take hold and Linge wanted it’ hot and furious’.  Paper was added to the fire and more petrol.  Most agree that the fire burned for at least two and a half hours.  Based on tests done on pigs, the combination of petrol and the wick-effect of the blankets would mean that precious little would be left.  However, the Russians agents later found a miraculously intact jawbone with complex and fragile, but strangely undamaged, dental work that could be conveniently compared to dental records.  Perhaps this exactly what happened but even the most jaded of debunkers have to admit that it was odd.

Hitler’s Missing dentist

According to accounts from the bunker, Hitler’s personal dentist, Hugo Johannes Blaschke, escaped from the bunker on or around the 26^th April 1945 and was later captured by American troops. As such, Hitler’s own dentist was never used to identify any dental remains of either the Adolf Hitler or his wife. However, as he left on an airplane it clearly proves that flights were still capable of leaving Berlinadding wheight to the quest Did Hitler Die in Berlin?

Identification of the Teeth

The teeth found by the Soviets were only a few and badly damaged although there was supposedly and intact jawbone. When SMERSH could not find Blaske (Hitler’s dentist) the job of finding someone was bizarrely given to Yelena Rzhevskaya a 26-year-old junior interpreter. They located an assistant of Hitler’s dentist – Käthe Heusermann – who had already been violated at least twice by Russian soldiers. They made it clear they want a positive answer.  In a state of fear and shock, she agreed they were Hitler’s teeth based on a complex gold dental bridge that was part df the collection. (Researchers have pointed out that this bridge could have easily been removed prior to the events in the bunker that led Blaske to leave on the 26^th April.) She was subsequently arrested and kept in a Russian jail for the next ten years.

Did Hitler Die in Berlin? X-ray-of-Hitlers-Skull

When she was released in 1955 and repeated her story.  It is generally agreed that Käthe was the only person to provide a positive identification of Hitler’s teeth.  A major concern of alternative theorists is that the bridge was made of gold and given its exposure to the high temperatures of the cremation fire it should have been severely damaged.  However, photos displayed in Russia in clearly show that this is not the case.

Chief Investigator Doubted Hitler’s Death

The investigation into Hitler’s death was carried out by Major Nikitine, Deputy Chief of Stalin’s own security police.  He reported that they did find secret tunnels leading Hitler’s private room to an underground network of chambers and further tunnels.  Three weeks after the ‘death’ of Hitler and sometime after the confirmation of the teeth, He stated that the Führer had neither shot himself nor been cremated, as generally believed, if indeed, he had perished at all. (http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,775644,00.html)

Joseph Stalin, the Russian Leader, believed Hitler was still alive

Joseph Stalin didn’t appear to believe Hitler was dead and had agents looking for him.  According to the Daily Express (2018) Truman, the president of the USA, asked Stalin if Hitler was definitely dead.  Stalin clearly answered ‘No.’  This would have been well after SMERSH supposedly gave Hitler and Braun’s remains to Stalin.  Declassified records show that Soviet Agents continued the search for Hitler until Stalin’s own mysterious death in 1953.

By Mil.ru, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=80632310

A year after the fall of Berlin, Stalin ordered a second team to dig up the chancellery garden for more evidence that Hitler was dead.  They found a skull fragment with a bullet hole in the crater where Hitler was said to have been buried.  This would become part of the Hitler relics held by the soviets but still failed to convince Stalin.

Officer Marshall Gregory Zhukov denied a body was found

The Russian Commander in Chief for the defeat and occupation of Berlin, Soviet Officer Marshall Gregory Zhukov didn’t believe either.  He clearly stated. “We found no corpse that could have been Hitler’s.”

Edgar Hoover, Head of the FBI and General Eisenhower (also President of the USA) had their doubts

Recently declassified documents reveal that Hoover wondered where Hitler really was and General Eisenhower is recorded as saying: “There is every assumption that Hitler is dead, but not a bit of conclusive proof that he is dead.”

Pilot testifies that He Flew Hitler to Denmark

In 1949, Captain Peter Baumgart, a former German Luftwaffe pilot and SS officer, insisted in front of a Warsaw tribunal that he flew Hitler and Eva Braun to Denmark on the 25 and 26th^th of May 1945.  They landed 44 miles from the Eiter River.  Baumgart claimed that Hitler went on to embark on a submarine. (The Advocate newspaper 9 Feb 1949) – copy of paper below based on Fair Use as so many have denied it ever existed. Incidentally, the news was issued from London not the USSR) Is this true? Well, we do know that flights were still leaving Berlin as late as the 26^th of April as one carrying five important individuals including Hitler’s private dentist were recorded.

(https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/69327754)

The FBI & CIA Kept Looking for Hitler until the 1960’s

The question that conspiracy theorists often ask is this: “If national security agencies were so sure Hitler died in Berlin at the end of the war – why did they keep looking for him?”  Why did they keep asking: Did Hitler Die in Berlin? For example, a recently declassified CIA document reveals that an agent – CIMELODY-3 – reported in 1955 that he had information and a photograph showing Hitler alive.  The information had been supplied by Phillip (CITROEN), a former German SS trooper and claimed that Hitler was living in Tunga, Columbia under the name Adolf Schuttelmayor (misspelt by the CIA as Schrittelmayor).

Adolf Schrittelmayor

Interestingly, ‘Schrittel Mayor’ can be translated as ‘Step Leader’ or even ‘Rising Leader’ however Schuttel translates as ‘Shaking Leader’ – both work. The CIA took the information seriously and passed it up the chain of command.  Over the years there were many other sightings and rumours from South America linking Hitler to the fascist regime of Colonel Juan Perón in Argentina.  These too were investigated.
(https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/HITLER%2C%20ADOLF_0003.pdf)

Hitler’s Russian ‘Skull’ turned out to be a Woman’s

In 1946, at Stalin’s secret instructions, a team reinvestigated the crater where Hitler was buried and discovered a skull fragment with bullet hole.  This they said belonged to Hitler and was clear proof that he committed suicide.  The skull was finally displayed in Moscow in 2000 as part of a war memorial.  In 2009 Dr Nicholas F. Bellantoni, who serves as the emeritus state archaeologist of Connecticut, was granted access to Hitler’s skull and took DNA samples.  Back in the USA the samples were tested and were clearly those of a woman aged between 20 and 40.  No other DNA samples taken were ever confirmed as belonging to Hitler.

Russian Autopsy doctor admits he lied – and where are the photos?

There are some reports circulating still that Faust Shkaravsky, the doctor who autopsied Hitler’s remains, admitted later that he lied to keep Stalin happy and avoid any unpleasantness for himself.  As part of this point, no photos of Hitler’s autopsy, the removal of his body from the Chancellery, his supposed internment at Magdeburg or his later re-cremation and disposal in either the sewer or river have ever surfaced.

Lots of other Nazis did Escape

One think that is often forgotten is that many Nazis did escape, and a large percentage were never found. Some of these were helped by Soviet and US forces in exchange for military secrets.  Wernher von Braun, the man behind the American missile and space programme was just one such person rescued during Operation Paperclip.

By Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1978-Anh.024-03 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5482979

The leader of another the escape network, this time NAZI, was Otto Skorzeny, an Austrian born German daredevil. As a commando leader, he was responsible for many daring raids and for rescuing the Italian Leader Mussolini from his mountaintop prison aided by the genius pilot Captain (Hauptmann) Von Gerlach.  He was dubbed the most dangerous man in Europe. Literally days before Berlin fell, he was ordered by Hitler to go to Bavaria and take control of the German resistance movement and NAZI escape network.  Some believe that, together with Gerlach again, he was responsible for flying Hitler and Eva Braun out of Berlin on the night of 29^th of April 1945 and taking him back to Bavaria.

Why no DNA Testing?

Perhaps the most intriguing question of is this: “Why have the Russians never done open and in-depth DNA testing on the remains in their possession and allowed their finds to be peer reviewed?  It’s a simple question and would end the debate once and for all – yet strangely, it has never happened!

Who Knows?

We are not saying that Hitler survived the war, or he didn’t – just pointing out the reasons why many people doubt the official version of events.  However, there is no getting away from the fact that the only forensic proof is that a detached dental bridge from a dubious source matches an X-ray from and equally dubious source.

Surely in the 21^st century with all our incredible technology we can do better than this?